any proposals for reform of the intelligence agencies coming out of the Pike or Church committees
with a pseudo-reform of his own, premissed on his own in-house study, the Rockefeller report,which recommended an increase of secrecy for covert operations and classified information. Since (^)
about the time of the Bush nomination, an interagency task force armed with the Rockefeller
commission recommendations had been meeting under the chairmanship of Ford's counselor Jack
O. Marsh. This was the Intelligence Coordinating Group, which included delegates of the
intelligence agencies, plus NSC, OMB, and others. This group wrecommendations that were given to Ford to study on his Christmas vacation in Vail, Colorado. Atorked up a series of final (^)
this point Ford was inclined to "go slow and work with Congress."
But on January 10 Marsh and the intelligence agency bosses met again with Ford, and the strategy
began to shift towards pre-empting Congreappearance at the CIA auditorium swearing in session and met with other officials in the Cabinetss. On January 30, Ford and Bush came back from their
Room. Attending besides Ford and Bush were Secretary of State Kissinger, Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld, Attorney General Levi, Jack Marsh, Phil Buchen, Brent Scowcroft, Mike Duval, and
Peter Wallison representing Vice President Rockefeller, who was out of town that day. [fn 33] Here
Ford presented his tentative conclusions for furtCongress, not to cooperate with it, to increase secrecy, and to increase authoritarian tendencies. her discussion. The general line was to pre-empt the
Ford scheduled a White House press conference for the evening of February 17. In an atmosphere
of intense last-minute haggling over bureaucratic prerogative, Bush was careful to meet with Leo
Cherne to consolidate his relations with both Cherne and PFIAB. Cherne's memo of February 6shows that he asked Bush to "make sure that we on the board are not surprised." Cherne stressed the (^)
need to know as much as possible about changes in the Sino-Soviet relationship and the need to
upgrade economic intelligence, which, he lamented, was becoming flabbier as the oil crisis and the
accompanying shocks to the international monetary system receded. Cherne was for declassifying
whatever could be declassified, a bureaucratic posture that could not go wrong. Chethe "Pike Commission has a poor staff, issued a dreadful final report, but it did in the course of itsrne thought that
inquiry ask the right questions." These, Cherne told Bush, should be answered. Cherne also wanted
to set up "non-punitive regular monitoring" to evaluate the successes and failures of the intelligence
community. This proposal should be noted, for here we have the germinal idea for Team B, which
Bush set up a few months later to evaluate the agency's record in judging the strategic intentionsand capabilities of the USSR. [fn 34]
In his press conference of February 17, Ford scooped the Congress and touted his bureaucratic
reshuffle of the intelligence agencies as the most sweeping reform and reorganization of the United
States intelligence agencies since the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. "I wparty to the dismantling of the CIA or other intelligence agencies," he intoned. He repeated that theill not be a (^)
intelligence community had to function under the direction of the National Security Council as if
that were something earth-shaking and new; from the perspective of Oliver North and Admiral
Poindexter we can see in retrospect that it guaranteed nothing. A new NSC committee chaired by
Bush was entrusted with the task of giving greater central coordination to the intelligencecommunity as a whole. This committee was to consist of Bush, Kissinger clone William Hyland of (^)
the National Security Council Staff, and Robert Ellsworth, the assistant secretary of Defense for
Intelligence. This committee was jointly to formulate the budget of the intelligence community and
allocate its resources to the various tasks.
The 40 Committee, which had overseen covert operations, was now to be called the Operations
Advisory Group, with its membership reshuffled to include Scowcroft of NSC, Kissinger,
Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff George Brown, plus observers from the Attorney
General and the Office of Mangement and Budget.